Old computers - how did they do it?

[Nox]

yep, people actually used to write programs in assembly language back in those days. these days its a lot cheaper for everyone concerned (except us) to put the cost of running the software onto getting powerful hardware, and the hardware companies love that too!

Nox

[Galant]

Erm.....anyone remember loading programs by cassette??

Commodore 64 anyone?

[Frost]

ive got an old VIC20... which i believe was a commodore? i think?? lol

[Darkmatter]

Reading all this is like taking a trip down memory lane again.

I started young had a BBC model B when i was 4, even learnt to program in basic on that. Think ive still got it somewhere, garden shed probably.

First proper PC at 11 was a tiny little Zenith Data System 386sx 20, 4mb ram, 42mb HD and a supper fast 256kb onboard GFX.
It worked a treat was really good, guess what still got that too.

Had loads of odd bits and pieces after that. Real shame i had that system for a good few years and it ran nearly everything. You cant do that these days 4months and somethings too slow

[Howard]

Originally said by Bill Gates back in the day

640K ought to be enough for anybody!

[p0lish]

My first "computer" was an ATARI 130 XL with a California Access Drive and a Star lc-5 printer. When I wanted to play a game from a cassette, i would set it to start reading lock the door tight, come back ina about 30 minutes praying that it didnt lock up. These were gewd times! then came my AMIGA 600 and my first PC... I consider AMiga teh biggest jump though.....

[dpm]

Well, my first pc (not counting the speccies ) was a 486sx 25Mhz beast.

Sadly, we only got 2mb of ram, only a few months before Doom came out - not only the Most Important PC Game Ever (at the time) but one that shocked everyone by demanding an unheard of 4mb. 4mb of ram to play a game! Lazy coding, I tell you If Gods would play fine in 640k then anything should!

Then I sold my bike to buy a soundblaster pro... Anyone remember the software Creative used to send out? Dr Sbaitso, the talking psychiatrist proggie ?

[Darkmatter]

Dr sbaitso, that was a comical piece of software, spent a few hours laughing at that.

[darkside]

Originally posted by www.josh.org.uk
How could people have used computers so slow?!? I just don't get how it could be possible!

How can people use software so bloated these days?

'Back in the Day' that would have been an adequate machine to run something like AutoCAD 10, a pro CAD package.

But back in the day, we didn't need to see a file flap and fly onscreen from one folder to another to know it was done - a DOS promt did the trick with less overhead.

Amusingly, a 486 with Win 3.1, Word 6 and Pegsus Mail probably still does (more than) what 80% of the home computing population needs, at a useable speed!

[[GSV]Trig]

Its true, all software thesedays is bloatware, look at the actual differences between Win98 and WinXP, now look at the system requirements, disk space usage alone is a joke...

[Nox]

take a look at workbench (amiga) basically a wimp environment at 220k, comparable to win 3.1 on 6 discs, comparable to win 95 on cd -> win98 -> xp. bascially does exactly the same thing... driver files alone are clocking in at 20+mb, 100 times larger than an entire OS !!!

Nox

[Loyal]

Well after my Amiga 500,

I picked up a LuckyGoldStar (before it was LG)

386-SX25 with a 80mb Hardisk.

Jezee that machine was great, Dune, Dune2, Monkey Island, Battletech Creseant Hawks Revenge, Wing Commander and the mission packs (even the original X-wing a few year later), PowerMonger etc.

Those were the days when games were coming on leaps and bounds or it seemed that way...

Amiga 500
386-SX25
486-DX25?? (needed a DX to play Links!)
486-DX80
Pentium 90
Pentium 120
K6-200
P2-400
Athlon 1500

Now my humble 1Ghz Notebook, and that is two years old.

The best machine? gotta be the 386 under dos, once you got the Autoexec.bat and config.sys working, I never seemed to have serious problems running a game unlike these days.

[s3v]

Amstrad CPC6128 my my first serious PC

[Nox]

how can you class an amstrad as serious?

Nox

[Skii]

I had a Commodore Vic20

[blockers]

First computer, I had a 386. My mum got it from work. A huge tower case, weighted about a tonne.... had a nice carry handle (for a crane to lift it maybe)

It ran Doom which was extreme, however i completed it but never got to any credits, i killed some of those fat horse things in the last level, then everything blacked out.....

Anyway, that was hit by the millium bug, i thought i could aviod it by putting the clock in windows *i forget which* back to 1989.....sadly it didnt work.

Will